Belarus Free Theatre: glimpse stage life under authoritarian rule

UK festival of undercover performances and secretive debates lets audience experience restricted existence of theatre outlawed in its home country.

The cloak and dagger nature of trying to see a play in one of Europe’s most authoritarian nations is to be mirrored in the UK as part of Belarus Free Theatre’s 10th anniversary celebrations.

Audiences will have no idea where they are going to see performances and post-show discussions being staged in a festival scheduled over two weeks in November.

The only exceptions will be performances at BFT’s only London home, the Young Vic, and a concert on 18 October called I’m with the Banned, which will see banned musicians such as Pussy Riot performing with guests including David Gilmour and Neil Tennant.

Announcing the season, Natalia Kaliada – the co-founder of the free theatre – said the idea of the underground, secret performances was to encourage audiences to reflect on how the company is forced to operate in its restrictive home country, where it is illegal.

“That parallel life is never reflected,” she said. “The audience in London is very protected: you buy a ticket, go to the show and it’s not possible to have a very close, intimate relationship with the audience.”

In Belarus, audiences get a text message 24 hours before the show, giving them a meeting point. They are escorted to the location, which might be a basement, a warehouse, a car park or even a forest in and around Minsk. Afterwards there is a debate and an exchange of ideas.

Viewers are told to bring their passports as it might make their detention shorter if they are caught in a KGB raid. “The audience in Belarus is the bravest in the world,” said Kaliada.

There won’t be any raids or threats during the London season, but audiences will get to the secret venue in similar fashion and discuss the issues afterwards.

The shows will explore 10 taboos. They include a staging of Sarah Kane’s final play, 4:48 Psychosis, which was BFT’s first play in Minsk in 2005 and was quickly followed by condemnation from the Lukashenko regime, which denied that suicide, mental instability or sexual violence could exist in Belarus.

At the Young Vic, where the theatre group are associate artists, BFT will stage Time of Women, King Lear and Being Harold Pinter.

The flagship event will be a concert on 18 October at KoKo in north London, which will feature bands banned from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. Friends of BFT, including Kim Cattrall and Juliet Stevenson, will give readings.

BFT are repeatedly recognised as one of the bravest theatre companies in the world, with ensemble members regularly risking their own safety for something taken for granted in the west. Its co-founders, who stay in regular contact with colleagues in Belarus, were granted political asylum in the UK in 2011.

Staging a Revolution will be presented across London from 2-14 November.